Which Tech Moguls Are Eyeing TikTok’s US Operations?

The TikTok soap opera is back for another season, and this time it’s starring some of the biggest names in tech and media, plus a few surprise cameos. 

Over the weekend, Donald Trump went on Fox News and casually name-dropped a who’s who of potential investors for TikTok’s long-running US spinoff. 

Among them: Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Dell Technologies’ Michael Dell, and, plot twist, media moguls Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan. (Via: TechCrunch)

“A man named Lachlan is involved,” Trump teased, as if revealing the next Marvel villain. “Rupert is probably gonna be in the group.”

Trump didn’t clarify whether the Murdochs were opening their personal wallets or bringing Fox Corp into the mix. 

But Deadline quickly reported that Fox, home of Fox News and run by Lachlan, is indeed in talks to join the investor group. 

The goal: peel off TikTok’s US operations from Chinese parent company ByteDance and put them under majority American control.

According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the framework is basically locked. Americans would control six of seven board seats, and TikTok’s all-important algorithm would be US-run. 

Oracle, Andreessen Horowitz, and private-equity giant Silver Lake are also expected to sign on, with Oracle taking charge of the app’s security. 

ByteDance, meanwhile, would be left with a stake of less than 20 percent, small enough to pass Washington’s sniff test.

This latest maneuver comes after months of brinkmanship. A federal bill passed last year threatened to ban TikTok outright, and the app even briefly went dark in the US earlier this year. 

But Trump, back in the Oval Office, kept extending ByteDance’s deadline to sell, buying time for a deal. 

He now says China’s President Xi Jinping has blessed the arrangement, and TikTok has even issued a thank-you note to both leaders for “preserving TikTok in the United States.”

If all goes as planned, the ink could dry in days. Until then, TikTok’s future is a mash-up of politics, power plays, and billionaire group chats, the perfect TikTok video, if only someone were filming.

Will the Murdoch family’s involvement in TikTok‘s potential buyout create conflicts of interest given their media empire, or does their experience make them valuable partners for navigating US regulatory concerns? Do you think this investor group can actually maintain TikTok‘s appeal while satisfying Washington’s demands for American control, or will the platform lose what made it special in the first place? Tell us below in the comments, or reach us via our Twitter or Facebook.

Ronil is a Computer Engineer by education and a consumer technology writer by choice. Over the course of his professional career, his work has appeared in reputable publications like MakeUseOf, TechJunkie, GreenBot, and many more. When not working, you’ll find him at the gym breaking a new PR.